Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYT6J0R1JDYVA1PFX6C1V7

Rain ate sound. Slick cobbles spat silver under streetlamps and neon. Harlow Quinn's boots hit puddles and sent spray into the torn hem of a jacket clutched at a fleeing shoulder. She moved like a soldier, each step measured, breath in tight, watch pressed against her wrist as if the leather could tell the time for her heart. Stop. A laugh tore from the man ahead. Too young to carry that kind of fear, too fast to be anything but trouble. He slid past a delivery van, shoulder grazing a dumpster; a flash of something pale at his fingers, bone-white against wet fabric. A token. That pulled the back of a memory like a hook—an unsolved photograph, a ledger, the whisper of a market that had no place on any map. Don't let him vanish. Quinn shouted his name, more demand than question. You're not getting away. His reply came as a bark—not words so much as a challenge. He darted through the green neon of a bar, the sign throwing a sickly glow over his hair. The Raven's Nest. She’d read about it in reports, a place wrapped in smoke and old stories, a bar that kept secrets on its walls like moths pinned to corkboard. He shoved the door, and the room swallowed him. Maps curled in their frames. Black-and-white photographs stared from every square inch. Someone moved behind the bar, slow as a shadow. A bookshelf at the back shifted when the man brushed it, a seam opening like a mouth. He wasn't going to stop. He pushed through the gap and disappeared. Quinn didn't hesitate. Rain plastered her hair to her skull. She followed. The bar's door banged closed behind her and then silence smothered the street again. Inside, low conversations died as she crossed the threshold. Glass chimed as she brushed past a table. The room smelled of old paper and stale ale, with a metallic undertone that tightened her jaw. You have no authority here. The barkeep's voice dropped like a stone. He leaned from behind the counter, hands empty, face like a map of small scars. Quinn kept moving toward the bookshelf, hand already on the seam she had seen the man trigger. The shelf swung inward with the cautious grace of something used often enough to remember its own steps. Warm, dry air hit her, different from the rain outside. The back room was small and lit by a single hanging lamp. Someone sat on a crate, shoulders hunched over a jacket. He looked up with the defiant slant of someone who had given up the pretense of innocence. Tomás Herrera didn't stand. He pushed a damp curl from his forehead with the back of a hand and let his eyes find Quinn. The Saint Christopher medallion caught the light and winked like a private star. A scar ran along his left forearm, pale against olive skin, a white river that travelled under his sleeve. You shouldn't be here, Tomás. He smiled without humour and set his jaw. "You shouldn't be following people into bars at one in the morning either." The man on the crate jerked. He had the bone token clenched in his fist, pale and jagged. He looked between them like someone holding an ember. You know him, Quinn said, toe tapping a crate. Names did the work a badge couldn't. Put them in pockets. Tomás kept his gaze level. "Name?" He swallowed. "Eddie." Eddie looked younger than his name felt. Quinn could have ignored the whisper of pity that ran under her chest and pressed advantage. This scene played out on the surface of the world, but the underside mattered more. The bone token said he wasn't just petty; he belonged to something that did not keep clean hands. Where'd you get that token? she asked. Eddie's fingers tightened. "I found it. I didn't—" Stop it. Tomás leaned forward, fingers hovering near the token in case a rush handed it to the floor. "You gave it to anyone?" Eddie spat a laugh that had more teeth than sense. "Are you asking me because you care, or because you want to make a report?" Quinn unclipped her watch and turned it in her hand. Worn leather. Military precision. Morris's laugh came back to her—sharp as broken glass—and then the memory vanished like smoke drawn under a door. She had not solved what had taken him. The Veil Market had been a name in a file, the sort that made men in suits blink and change subjects. A Tube station beneath Camden. Bone tokens. Banned things. She had kept it in the folder alongside other things she had not yet needed to open. Tomás's jaw tightened. "He shouldn't have a token," he said. "Not without—" With what, Quinn wanted to ask. Tickets? Vouchers? She let the question cut instead to the one that mattered. You know where it is? she asked. Tomás's hand brushed his medallion, protective, habitual. "It moves," he said. "Every full moon. But it's here tonight, in a shaft under Camden. People wait in doorways with bones around their necks. They trade and barter for things that don't have receipts." Eddie made a sound that was near a sob. "Please," he said to Tomás. "I can—" No one invited him to finish. Quinn's stare softened for a heartbeat and then hardened. "You have to hand the token over." Tomás stood. He reached into his jacket and produced a small kit—bandages folded like origami, a roll of tape, a syringe with a cap. The air shifted around him, part man who would stitch you up for the NHS, part man who kept secrets under his hands. He didn't move toward the token. Tomás looked at Quinn and said, "If you take that, you pull that boy into a world he doesn't understand." And if you leave it, the market keeps spinning and people keep getting hurt, Morris’s face came back. Harlow swallowed. She did not vocalise the argument. She let it live behind her teeth. Eddie's fingers dug into the bone. "I won't tell anyone," he said. "I swear on—on my mother's grave—" That phrase landed badly. The room tightened. Quinn's knuckles whitened on the watch. Promises meant less than wood. "Hand it over," she said. No softness. No grooming of the ask. She moved with a certainty that had been drilled into her from years that had nothing to do with supernatural markets. "You can come down to the station. We'll figure it out." Tomás's eyes flicked to the doorway. The bar's patrons were back in the corners, conversations resuming in low tones. The bartender crossed his arms, the set of his shoulders a map of decisions made long before Quinn had walked under his sign. "Police don't get down there," Tomás said. Quinn laughed—dry, sharp. "Police don't need tickets. We have warrants, we have beeps, we have—" He cut her off. "You won't get out on the other side the way you went in." A muscle jumped in Quinn's jaw. She didn't know what the 'other side' meant in Tomás's mouth. She did know men could make bones into keys and lock people into places that smelled of old iron and worse bargains. She also knew rules. Her badge, her jurisdiction. Weighing them was a cadence she had practiced her whole career. "Then I'll make my own way back," she said. Tomás stepped closer, until the smell of sweat and disinfectant folded into her senses. "You walked into a bar, Detective," he said. He did not lower his voice. "You walked into someone's home with a club and a badge. If you go beneath Camden tonight, you will be out of the department's reach. They will close their files. You risk more than your skin." Quinn's mouth went thin. "My partner died because someone opened a market like that and didn't tell me, Tomás. I lost a friend in a place that did not keep the law. I will not stand outside while a kid holds a bone and thinks he's set for life." Tomás's nostrils flared. He did not step back. "You will not be the first to go in thinking you could fix it with a pair of cuffs." The crate scraped as Eddie jumped to his feet. He shoved the token into Quinn's hand before either of them could stop him. It was cold and rough and held the smell of something that had been buried far too long. "Don't," Tomás warned. Quinn closed her fist around the token. Bone and age pressed into her palm. It felt like a matchbox with a lit ember inside. She looked at Eddie. Fear sat in his shoulders like a physical weight. "Stay here," she said. Eddie nodded like he was obeying a sentence. She moved toward the bookshelf. The seam was a mouth; the wood gave, and a staircase descended into a shaft smelling of wet stone and old metal. Rainwater tapped somewhere below like a distant heartbeat. You didn't have to go alone, a voice inside her suggested. There were protocols. There were radios and backup. There were men and women who owed her calls and answers. You could lose more than a partner if you went down, Tomás had said. He waited in the doorway, a sentinel with open hands. He did not offer to come. Quinn's fingers curled around the bone token until the edges bit into her skin. The watch on her wrist clicked into time as if to measure the moment against a lifetime. The rain outside had faded to a constant, patient percussion. Her breath came steady, a metronome. Her boots found the first step. Tomás stepped forward, hand hovering near her elbow. "If you go in, I tell you this: you watch for tricks. They trade memories there sometimes. They trade more. Guard your head." She looked up at him, and the room narrowed. "If I come back with anything missing," she said, voice even, "I'll come back different." Tomás's jaw tightened. "Then come back," he said. "Come back in one piece." Quinn tucked the token into the inner pocket of her jacket. The staircase smelled like iron and old tunnels. A draft pushed up from below, carrying the faint tang of incense and oil and a thousand small currencies. The Veil Market moved every full moon, Tomás had said. Tonight was a moon they had no business counting. She descended. Halfway down, she paused and looked back. The lamp above the crate painted Tomás in amber. He had not followed. He stood with his hands in his pockets, medallion catching the light, scar showing where his sleeve had ridden back. "Call if you need me," he said. Quinn met his gaze. "If I don't," she said, "you know where the bar is." She turned and stepped into the dark, and the stone swallowed her whole.